This paper discusses contemporary societal roles of German in the Baltic states (Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania). Speaker and learner statistics and a summary of sociolinguistic research (Linguistic Landscapes, language learning motivation, language policies, international roles of languages) suggest that German has by far fewer speakers and functions…

In contemplating multilingualism and mobility in the 21st century, several dimensions warrant attention in the emerging field of migration linguistics. First is the move beyond migration to thinking about mobilities, in particular, the new mobilities paradigm in the social sciences which views human mobility as entailing a complex assemblage of…

To date, studies that investigate lexical overlap in signed languages have mainly considered the relationships between deaf community signed languages. The alternate sign languages of Indigenous Australia provide an opportunity to take another perspective -- they are perhaps amongst the oldest known sign languages in the world, their main users…

This study adopts an apparent-time diachronic linguistic landscape (LL) approach to investigate the vitality of an ethnic minority language in China, namely the Nuosu Yi ([foreign characters omitted]). Diachronic LL research is concerned with changes in language use on signage over time. It provides insights into phenomena such as language shift,…

This study is a systemic examination of three Hungarian national curricula and their effects on minority students' education over 130 years beginning in 1777, when a uniform, state-regulated school system was created, accompanied by carefully drafted educational policies to which educational institutes had to adhere. The documents presented in…

In the last decades, the propagation of Mandarin has been carried out across the People's Republic of China as de facto language assimilation. It has achieved great success in that over 80 percent of the population can speak Mandarin, but it has also had devastating effects on minority language learning, maintenance, and use. Meanwhile, the…

Maritime Sign Language (MSL) is a Canadian, minority sign language that originally stems from British Sign Language (BSL). Currently used by elderly Deaf people in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland (and Labrador), it is a moribund language, having undergone language shift to American Sign Language (ASL). MSL is…

Despite an increasing interest in pronunciation instruction in English as a majority language or international "lingua franca," less is known about pronunciation learning in non-English minority languages, especially among child learners. Bilingual education programs provide a unique context to address this research gap, as they involve…

One of the features of the growing prominence of English across the globe is the proliferation of English-medium instruction (EMI) programmes at all levels of education, driven by a neoliberal agenda which places a disproportionate value on English over other languages. While this spread has primarily affected more developed, urban contexts, EMI…

The protection of language rights and linguistic groups is the cornerstone of the constitutional dispensation that Ethiopian has embarked upon almost two decades ago. The constitution declares that all Ethiopian language shall enjoy equal state recognition and allows for regional preference in language use. This article examines the laws and…

This article examines the shared experiences and understandings teachers draw on to teach children with an awareness of linguistic diversity. To do so, we analyzed interviews from Turkey and the United States and drew on philosophical hermeneutics as a way to develop a disruptive understanding of teachers' views regarding the role of languages in…

The impact of neoliberalism on language education has recently attracted scholars' attention. Linguistic entrepreneurship is a conceptual lens through which neoliberal implications for language learning and use can be investigated. This commentary offers comments on common threads of themes running through the four articles in this special issue.…

This article describes the use of linguistic landscaping as a pedagogical resource [Sayer, Peter. 2010. "Using the Linguistic Landscape as a Pedagogical Resource." "ELT Journal" 64 (2): 143-154] for teaching and learning about multilingualism in a graduate course on ethnographic research methods. We present an account of a…

The purpose of the paper is to shed light on potential driving forces that guide principals' decisions on how to implement language policies in their schools in Kazan, Russia. Kazan is the capital of Tatarstan and home for the second biggest ethnic group in Russia, called Tatars, whose native language proficiency is gradually declining. After…

In a nation where monolingualism predominates, heritage language (HL) has been downplayed as less important in educational contexts in the U.S. Disproportionately little attention has been given to the role of HL in language minority (LM) students' attendance to postsecondary education (PSE) (cf. Brutt-Griffler, Janina, and Manka Varghese, eds.…